


You Were The Year Poised On The Equinox.

by Lanna Michaels (lannamichaels)



Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars Original Trilogy
Genre: 5 Things, 5+1, Alderaan Is Not Destroyed, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Everyone Lives, Alternate Universe - Jyn Erso Raised By Galen & Lyra, F/F, Fix-It, Happy Ending, Jyn Erso-centric, Lesbian Leia Organa, Lesbians Save The Universe, POV Jyn Erso, Spies, lesbian Jyn Erso
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-07
Updated: 2017-04-07
Packaged: 2018-10-16 03:30:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,127
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10562793
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lannamichaels/pseuds/Lanna%20Michaels
Summary: Five secrets between Jyn and Leia, and one that doesn't need to be said.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to Flamebyrd for the brainstorming help! The title is from [Nearly a Valediction by Marilyn Hacker](https://www.poets.org/poetsorg/poem/nearly-valediction).

1.

Jyn Erso is eleven years old and in a dress too big for her. She's told she'll grow into it, but that doesn't exactly help her right now from looking like she's wearing someone else's clothes. The Alderaanian delegation to her father's laboratory includes the young Alderaanian princess, so Jyn has been dressed up and told to make nice. They're hosting the Alderaanians, so it's up to Jyn to help make a good impression and get her father's lab more funding from the Imperial Senate.

Princess Leia is dressed simply in a green dress. Her dress fits her properly, unlike Jyn's, but her hair is in braids down her back, like Jyn's. That's good. Jyn likes that they have something in common, but she doesn't think she can make conversation about hair for however long it'll be until the adults are done being important at each other.

But Princess Leia is a princess and she's actually good at interacting with people. She's probably had classes on it. Jyn's classes are mostly conducted by the people in the lab, or it's stuff off the holonet. There are other kids who run around the lab, but they aren't _princesses_.

Jyn finds herself liking Leia. She can't really figure out _why_ , what's the bit that turns her over from 'tolerating' to 'liking', but she does.

Four hours in, they're sitting on the floor, eating snacks from the cafeteria, and Jyn pulls her necklace out.

"The Force is in this, my dad says," Jyn tells Leia. She takes the necklace off and puts it into Leia's outstretched hand. Leia closes her fingers around the crystal.

From within Leia's grasp, the crystal begins to glow.

 

2.

Director Krennic has scared Jyn ever since she was tiny. She's sixteen now, and Krennic is taking her to Coruscant. She's old enough now to know that the guards on her are to make sure she doesn't escape, not to make sure no one kills her. Oh, they'd probably try to stop people from killing her, but that's just because Jyn's a valuable hostage. She wasn't allowed to go off-planet for school, and the only reason she's going now is because Papa is performing some dangerous tests. If the tests don't go well... Jyn's probably never going to know. She hopes she'll see the shots coming and be able to fight back, but her self-defense training has always had to be secret. She doesn't know how she'd stack up against the guards. She can make explosives with odds and ends -- her parents have seen to that -- and she's a good enough shot, but there's one of her, and there are six guards. The odds aren't great.

But she has a job to do on Coruscant, if she can manage it. Krennic brought her here for his own reasons, but she has her reasons, too.

Jyn is here to find the Rebellion.

Her father can't trust anyone in his lab and, moreover, he's a terrible liar. She's been told that she shouldn't tell him who she contacts, if she's able to make contact. Rebellions are built on secrets, but they're also built on trust. Papa trusts Jyn. And Jyn... Jyn needs to find someone to let her in on a secret.

She has two different secrets to tell. One is real, the other isn't. The hope is she'll know in time to make sure the right secret gets to the Rebellion. There's a weakness in the new Star Destroyers, one her father hadn't planted, but had discovered when reviewing the plans and had kept an eye out to make sure no one fixed. If everything goes wrong, she can tell it to Krennic, if she needs to gain his trust after her father is murdered. But the hope is: she can tell the Rebellion.

Her mother remembers, from before the Empire, during the last days of the Old Republic: Bail Organa worked with the Jedi.

It's no guarantee. It's nothing to hang your climbing rope on and hope it will bear your weight. But they have to try. Jyn has been occasional pen pals with Leia Organa. And Jyn remembers the way the crystal had glowed.

Jyn hopes: if anyone can point her to the Rebellion, to someone who can really use this information, it's Leia Organa. Jyn hopes: someone who can feel the Force wouldn't turn her in to the Empire.

It takes two weeks of plotting, but Jyn finds herself at the same restaurant as Leia Organa. Leia comes over to greet her warmly and they make spontaneous plans to go for a ride. Leia wants to show Jyn around Coruscant.

Leia only has one passenger seat, so Leia's security follows them, and Jyn's does, too.

And as Leia pilots them in a loop through Coruscant's skyscrapers, Jyn bends over and whispers, "I really hope this isn't a mistake."

And then she whispers, "you can blow out a Star Destroyer bridge in one shot if you know where to look." And Leia holds very still, and Jyn tells her all of it.

Ten minutes later, Leia returns them to the restaurant. They have dinner together, laughing over mutual acquaintances. Jyn goes back to her hotel. Leia goes back to the Senate.

The next day, Jyn's allowed to go home. She tells her father nothing, as they agreed. She tells her mother that it wasn't a mistake.

 

3.

There's a game that's played with cards or shells. It goes like this:

You can't trust anyone, but you have to trust someone. There's a cargo pilot, Bodhi Rook, who gives you the vibe of someone not too happy with the status quo.

You think you might know where to find an old friend, Saw Gerrera, who knows how to smuggle information into the Rebellion. But maybe he won't. There's been a falling out, you see.

Follow the pilot. He takes smugglers routes. He sends encoded transmissions. He is on the run. Watch him fly. Watch him flee.

On Alderaan, Princess Leia is hosting her planet's annual advanced technology extravaganza. Galen Erso sent his regrets along with three engineers to recruit for his projects. Jyn tags along as a last minute decision. She's getting older. It's time for her to take more responsibility for her family's legacy. She's there to make sure they only recruit the best and brightest.

She is searched before she leaves, of course. Her droids are wiped. There are standard protocols.

No one will ever see the handoff.

Princess Leia enjoys her friend's visit and tells her to come back soon one day. They will, she says, explore solar graveyards and experience _stardust_.

Jyn doesn't breathe easily until they break atmosphere. It's in Leia's hands now.

Bodhi makes contact with the Rebellion. Saw Gerrera is with him. There is no need for the secondary plan to retrieve the schematics.

And the cards keep moving.

 

4.

On Eadu, they live at the mercy of whatever news makes it through the censor nets. Scientific journals are the only sure thing, but they don't tell of the fall of the Death Star.

They know they have succeeded when Krennic arrives and kills four of the engineers. Jyn holds her mother's hand tightly; they knew this would probably end in all of their deaths. Even if Krennic didn't know who got the plans out, surely the father of the Death Star would have to die for the failure of his creation. The Empire has always enjoyed providing bloody incentives to its scientists. The price of this private success would be death for public failure. Jyn and her parents had accepted that. But they had told none of the others.

But it doesn't happen.

They're removed from Eadu, taken to Coruscant, where Galen consults with the best of the Empire in analyzing what went wrong. The Emperor, after all, does not want the mistakes repeated in the next Death Star.

The _next_ Death Star.

They're watched too much to get any message out. When Jyn visits Leia at her Senate office, Leia gives her a signal. They cannot say anything here. Even code words would be dangerous, would be giving free intelligence to the Empire. Leia is suspected. Her father is under official investigation. But Bail Organa did not have the clearance to know of the Death Star, and there are no records of him accessing any information about any of the planets where the parts were being fabricated, where the labor pools came from. He might have known about the money transfers. They can find nothing else. But they are looking. They are looking intensely. Jyn thinks they will fabricate something if they can't find what they're looking for, but she didn't grow up in politics. She doesn't know what Alderaan is to the Empire. She only knows what the Organas are to her.

One full year passes on Coruscant. Jyn attends university. She's Galen Erso's daughter; they want to be sure to keep her occupied. She's not sure what they think she's going to do if she gets too bored, but she's too excited to get a chance at an outside education to ask. She tests out of some classes, applies herself completely to the ones she doesn't, and makes exactly three friends. She knows one of them is an Imperial agent. Maybe two, but that might just be paranoia talking.

Jyn was the one who got the Death Star plans out into the galaxy. She's going to be paranoid for a while now.

She gets a degree in chemistry while her father is still locked in a room with every other great brain in the Empire. Somehow he has to discover his own mistake and then come up with ways to fix it without implicating himself in creating it. Somehow.

Jyn starts working at the lab, but keeps herself busy, learning everything she can. She doesn't want to build weapons and she knows that if she starts rivaling her father's genius, her father's life suddenly becomes much less valuable. After all, why keep the failure when you could promote the successful child. So Jyn works with the botanists. It's an old code, putting things into plant DNA. It's not subtle. But you have to know to look for it.

Leia Organa gets sent a bouquet of flowers.

Leia Organa gets sent the coordinates of the spacedock where the next Death Star is being constructed.

And Jyn hopes Leia knows to look.

 

5.

When it happens, it happens fast. Jyn's off-planet, recruiting for her own lab. Leia's on a diplomatic mission. Neither of them are near Coruscant when everyone finds out that the Rebellion has two Jedi. Neither of them are near Coruscant when one of the Jedi is captured and brought to the Emperor. Neither of them are there when Palpatine dies, when Vader dies, when Mon Mothma stands up in the Imperial Senate.

Jyn's crystal glows beneath her shirt and she takes it off quickly. The light blinks at her in careful bursts and, after a moment, Jyn starts writing them down. It takes her an hour to work out the code, and two more to figure out how to respond.

Leia has a twin brother. 

Leia was adopted. 

Leia's birth father was Darth Vader.

And everything changes, but nothing changes. Jyn shakes the crystal and covers it with her fingers in patterns.

She sends back, "I'm glad you're you. I'm glad you're safe. I'll be home soon."

 

+1.

Before, Jyn had never known for sure just how embedded Leia was with the Rebellion, if it was just that Leia could pass along messages, or if it were more. Leia kept a busy schedule, but so did most Senators. It really wasn't something Jyn could ever ask, just like Leia never asked who in the Erso Lab was sending the messages that Jyn was passing along.

When the New Republic forms, when Leia is feted for her role in the Rebellion, when the Jedi return, Jyn stands up and saves her father's life. She stands tall and declares him the only reason the Empire could be made to fall. Her father is among the most famous and most feared Imperial scientists, but Jyn stands up proudly.

Leia introduces Jyn to her birth-brother, the Jedi named Skywalker. Leia tells her that she's learning to use the Force, and Jyn's crystal feels warm against her skin.

Leia says, "we have a future now." She smiles. "We have hope."

Jyn has always had hope, ever since her crystal first lit up in Leia's hand. Jyn takes Leia's hand. 

And Leia kisses her.

And, later, Jyn smiles against Leia's shoulder. Some secrets don't need to be told for them to be known. Some secrets aren't secrets at all.


End file.
